Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Yona Levin
Original language
English
Categories
True crime

Helltown

Casey Sherman

Before Charles Manson, there was Tony Costa―the serial killer of Cape Cod.

1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love... and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire―the leader of their counter-culture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod, and no one who crosses his path is safe.

When young women begin to disappear, Costa's natural charisma and good looks initially protect him from suspicion. But as the bodies are discovered, the police close in on him as the key suspect. Meanwhile, local writers Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer are locked in a desperate race to secure their legacies as great literary icons―and they both set their sights on Tony Costa and the drug-soaked hippie culture that he embodies as their next promising subject, launching independent investigations that stoke the competitive fires between two of the greatest American writers.

Immersive, unflinching, and shocking, Helltown is a landmark true crime narrative that transports us back to the turbulent late 1960s, reveals the secrets of a notorious serial killer, and unspools the threads connecting Costa, Vonnegut, and Mailer in the seaside city that played host to horrors unlike any ever seen before. New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman has crafted a stunner.

Available products
Book Published 2022-07-12 by Sourcebooks

Comments

:"With Helltown, Casey Sherman delivers the kind of true crime that keeps eyes glued to the pages -- smart, impeccably researched, and utterly absorbing. Destined to be on all the year-end best nonfiction lists, this is an unqualified triumph by a writer at the top of his game!"
--Gregg Olsen, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of If You Tell

"Master storyteller Casey Sherman takes us back in time to the 1960s and into the dark mind of a charismatic serial killer. Set against the idyllic backdrop of Cape Cod, Helltown is a riveting, often spine-tingling true crime story."
--Terence Winter, Executive Producer of The Sopranos, Creator, Boardwalk Empire

"Before Charles Manson there was Tony Costa, a charming guru conman with a penchant for gruesome murder of women he found attractive. In the late 1960’s, he was a serial killer before that term was in our lexicon. And his evil was the nightmare obsession of Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., competing literary giants who wrote about Costa’s crimes. The intersection of Mailer, Vonnegut, and Costa is the meat of this engrossing story set in the underbelly of Provincetown, a cinematic tale of of one man’s demented mind. Thoroughly researched and written with high intensity, Casey Sherman’s HELLTOWN recaptures that turbulent time in America’s history. You can’t put it down." - Brad Furman, director of The Lincoln Lawyer & City of Lies

Cape Cod is a place of mutable beauty with a stormy history anchored to a rough and rowdy settlement known as Helltown, undergirding Provincetown. Journalist and best-selling author Sherman grew up on Cape Cod, and now exhumes the full, horrifying story of serial killer Tony Costa’s grotesque 1969 rampage. A charismatic drug dealer and user, Costa attracted young disciples and easily reeled in the gentle women he murdered. Sherman portrays Costa with ferocious intimacy, tracking his every move and channeling the inner voice that propelled his macabre acts. Sherman also illuminates the minds and lives of two Cape Cod writers and fathers—one flamboyantly pugnacious and famous, the other brooding and struggling—who were galvanized by the killings, mixing avidly researched facts with what he calls "elements of fictional storytelling” to portray Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut to vivid if sometimes dubious effect. On firmer ground, Sherman incisively aligns the shocking Cape Cod killings with the even more diabolical violence of Charles Manson and his followers, the Vietnam War and antiwar protests, the Apollo 11 mission, and the tragic scandal of Chappaquidick. Readers will not soon forget Sherman’s gripping and elucidating web of true crime and literary history tracing the personal, communal, political, and artistic repercussions of gruesome killings during a time of indelible ferment.